The Exigencies of War
by Rumour of an Alchemist
Summary: Alternate Universe. One-shot. James and Harry are dead, but Lily's former headmaster wants to ask something of her... Warning! Highly manipulative 'for the greater good' Albus Dumbledore. Warning! Tragedy. Rated 'M'.


Disclaimer: I am not J. K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter.

Note: This piece is a one-shot I'm originally posting in May 2013, to try and avoid falling out of the habit of posting, whilst I muster for a final push on Chapter 7 of Alternate Scene by the Lake 4. It occurs in an alternate universe where events on the night of Hallowe'en 1981 play out somewhat differently from canon. It's mostly from Lily Potter's perspective, although there's a bit from Severus Snape's point of view too.

Warning! Tragedy (including references to character deaths).

Warning! Highly manipulative, 'For the Greater-Good' Albus Dumbledore.

This piece is rated 'M'.

* * *

_Lily:_

Lily felt numb and empty. Things happened in the background, people coming and going and saying things. Some of them took her to places, where other people said other things. None of it registered really.

Her universe had collapsed.

Finally, Albus Dumbledore appeared, and took her somewhere she recognised – his office in Hogwarts. The phoenix, Fawkes, was crooning something mournful and so very deeply moving in the background.

Lily felt Albus pressing a goblet of something to her lips and a liquid sliding down her throat.

And then the pain _hit_ her, and she wept and sobbed for what seemed like forever, at the loss.

Albus just sat there, a grave expression on his face, not doing anything whilst she cried.

At last she managed to pull herself together sufficiently to look up at her old headmaster and to ask:

"_Why?_"

"Because he is a tyrant, or means to be a tyrant, and it is essential for a tyrant to carry out acts on a regular basis which will ensure that he is feared." Albus said. "This night, it happened that it was you and James and Harry. It might as easily have been a shop in Diagon Alley, or a farmhouse on the Welsh marches, or a home of an official in Cornwall. Even if Voldemort lacked reasons to select _specific_ targets, he would still maim and kill and destroy anyway, until he had achieved all his goals and felt secure in his position." He sighed. "I perhaps over-simplify things, and do not do full justice to the twists and turns of his mind, but this is an answer which I hope that you will, suffering as you currently are, be able to – to some extent – comprehend."

"And why am _I_ still alive then?" Lily asked. "The muggle-born, when my husband and son are dead?"

"Ah." said Albus and looked very solemn. "_That_ is why you are here now, and why I have taken such steps to move you along in your emotions – why I do not believe that I can afford to take the risk of letting you have the time to grieve naturally, if there is at all a possibility of gaining your co-operation with… something. You are here and still alive, I would surmise, because one of _his_ servants asked him to spare _you_. That you _are_ still alive is, I believe, a mark of how highly he values that servant, which puts me now in something of an awkward position. You see, that servant, having requested his master spare you some time ago, concluded that it might not be sufficient, and so he came to _me_ and asked me to try to save _all_ of you. And now he will have seen that I have failed him but that his master whom he doubted had granted his request, and whilst I _had_ been hoping to rely on him as a spy, my grip on him is suddenly somewhat insecure. I have concluded that it is wisest of me not to ask anything further of him from this point forward, Lily. I can only hope to rely upon _you_."

"Who is this man who works for Voldemort who cares about me so much?" Lily frowned. There wasn't anyone that she could think of.

"Severus Snape." said Albus, very carefully, watching her.

Lily burst out in hysterical laughter. It took her ten minutes to calm down.

"That's ridiculous." Lily said at last. The whole world seemed to be crazy. "He hates me. He called me a 'mudblood' in public in my fifth year. He was using dark magic all the time at school, and fighting with James and Sirius and Peter and Remus non-stop. I thought he must have joined the Death Eaters, until you employed him to teach potions here, but now you're telling me that he _did_ join the Death Eaters."

"I feel, Lily, that at this point it would be most helpful in moving things forward if you would please accompany me to view a memory in my pensieve – my memory as it happens – of the night Severus came to me to beg me to save you all. From that point we will hopefully be able to move forwards, and you can either agree to assist me with my campaign, or – if that would be asking too much – I can take steps to ensure that this conversation remains strictly between ourselves and permit you to go back to your grief."

Twenty minutes later, Lily was sitting and staring in disbelief. She'd insisted on viewing the memory several times, and there was no escaping the facts. Severus Snape with his usual sneering mask cracked, and practically crying had pleaded with Albus Dumbledore to save her – to save _all_ of them, even, including _James_ – and sworn that he'd do _anything_ in return. Severus Snape who'd given the part of the prophecy which he'd overheard to Voldemort in the first place, but who looked like he'd heartily regretted ever having done so.

Severus Snape, a wizard who must be practically in Voldemort's inner circle and over whom she had a terrible power which she'd never realised.

And Severus was a wizard whose treachery to Dumbledore Voldemort apparently _hadn't ever yet detected_ – otherwise why _would_ he have left her alive like that?

It was almost more than she could take. She nearly asked Albus to obliviate her and send her back to grieving.

"What needs to be done?" she asked at last. She would fight on, for her dead husband and her dead son, to bring down the monster who had killed them.

Albus Dumbledore looked a mixture of sad and guiltily relieved, but he told her anyway, what he thought needed to be done.

* * *

_Professor__ Severus Snape:_

Severus Snape was a man in turmoil. He'd finally made it back to his quarters and just been meaning to turn in for the night, following the ghastly spectacle that was the Hogwarts annual Hallowe'en feast, when a knock had come at the door, and moments later Albus Dumbledore was there with Lily.

Lily Potter, _née_ Lily Evans, and the last person that he had expected to see here, tonight.

Her face was tear-stained and her clothes grimy and she didn't look too good.

"If you wouldn't mind, Severus, Lily needs some company and somewhere safe to bunk for the night." Albus had said, and bustled out again, leaving the two of them together.

"Mrs. Potter?" Severus said as coolly as he could manage. Where the bloody hell was her husband, or that brat Minerva and Hagrid kept going on about whom they claimed was so very nearly the spitting image of the father? Their absence and Lily's very obvious distress about _something_ was suggestive, but he wasn't quite sure of what. He thought that they'd all been supposed to be in hiding under a fidelius charm somewhere, with Sirius Black as their secret keeper.

"They're _dead_, Severus." Lily managed to get out, and broke down in tears. "James and Harry. _He_ killed them, including Harry right in front of me."

Suffering snorkacks; Severus had had an idea that _something_ must have gone down this evening, given Albus Dumbledore's sudden and hasty departure from the feast, and the way that Severus' dark mark occasionally twinged, indicating that the Dark Lord was busy calling other Death Eaters (he wouldn't attempt to call Severus away from Hogwarts on such an important occasion, given that Severus _was_ supposed to be there spying for him, and therefore not arousing suspicion) but not _this_. The fidelius was supposed to be practically unbreachable, the ultimate method to protect and hide someone. So long as the secret keeper remained safe…

"Sirius Black." Severus said, unable to help himself. "If this is _his_ fault…" He wasn't sure what to say or do. If Black had switched sides, betraying the Potters to him in the process, the Dark Lord would surely elevate and reward the traitor above almost all other Death Eaters – he _prized_ pure-bloods of the Black family, and the last male Black heir in his generation would be valued and protected. Conversely, if Black had been captured and the secret tortured out of him, whilst Voldemort was hardly likely to simply dispose of him afterwards, he would be a highly treasured and well-guarded _prisoner_.

"It wasn't him." Lily managed to correct him in between the tears. "We switched keepers at the last minute, and pretended it was still going to be Sirius. We used Peter Pettigrew."

Oh well, Peter Pettigrew, if still alive, would be another kettle of fish altogether; it might be possible for Severus to do _something_ about Pettigrew one way or another without compromising his own position.

A small, very tiny, rational part of Severus' mind was trying to raise the question of just _what_ Severus' position ought to be, now, given that Dumbledore had clearly failed to protect _all_ the Potters, but that the Dark Lord had so very clearly _spared_ Lily? That miniscule corner of Severus' mind was currently being drowned out by the fact that he had a tearful Lily clinging to him right now, who seemed highly distraught, and whose breath smelt of something alcoholic and of something else… presumably Albus had been trying to assuage her grief.

Why in Salazar Slytherin's name had the headmaster brought her down here and left her with Severus anyway? Albus was _much_ more of a 'people person' and ought to be better at handling a grief-stricken woman than Severus. A _crazy_ grief-stricken woman.

Oh no, what was she doing? What had that bloody idiot, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore done to her or tipped down her throat, or had she been so traumatised by the deaths of her husband and son that she'd become completely unhinged?

Severus _tried_ to disengage from her, gently, but she just kept on coming, and after his day he was too tired to make a serious attempt to resist. And this was Lily, and he couldn't do anything _forceful_ to try and make her stop…

* * *

_Lily:_

The situation was a chessboard, Lily understood, in the cold light of a room in the dungeons the following morning, with Severus Snape a strategically positioned knight close to _both_ the leaders, and in theory capable of dealing almost incalculable damage to the one or the other at a crucial moment. The tricky part was as to the colours of which side he was arrayed in? For some months leading up until last night, Albus had said he was quite certain that Severus was _his_ spy and double-agent against Voldemort. But with Voldemort having 'spared' Lily at Severus' request, Albus was afraid that Severus' loyalties might sway.

Hence the 'exploratory mission' that Albus had assigned her to test Severus of last night.

It had probably been a good thing that she _had_ been half-drunk and otherwise out of her mind with the recent catastrophes and whatever Albus had given her. She wasn't sure she could have done _that_ otherwise. At crucial moments she'd told herself this was a crazy James, _pretending_ to be Severus Snape, that she was tangled up with.

Her assessment, following how last night had finished, was that Severus Snape had a kind of desperate hunger for her, that bordered on madness, but that he only wanted to _please_ her, and not ever to _hurt_ her. It was something she'd never expected to see of Severus Snape.

She was going to have to report that to Albus after breakfast.

What was going to happen about breakfast anyway?

And the funerals? For James and Harry? When were they going to be? What about their bodies? Had the people arriving in Godric's Hollow last night been taking care of stuff like that?

Her mind was full of worries.

* * *

Author Notes:

Basically, in this alternate universe, Voldemort arrived at Godric's Hollow, much as in canon, killed James, body-bind cursed and levitated out of the way Lily, killed Harry, and then left Lily behind in the wreckage.

At the time of original posting I'm unclear on the exact date Severus Snape started teaching at Hogwarts, but have assumed that it was at some point by the commencement of the 1981-1982 school year.

The Albus Dumbledore in this story basically considers an undetected agent in Voldemort's inner circle more important than the tragedy that has all but overwhelmed one woman, with the double-loss of her husband and son. Conceivably, from a purely _military_ of view his actions are a logical approach to take, at least with regard to the near-future. Realistically, he appreciates that there's going to be only so much he can likely pile on her before Lily goes completely to pieces, so he wants to get as much out of her (and Severus) as soon as possible. I did warn, in my opening notes, that this particular alternate universe fiction features a 'Highly manipulative' Albus Dumbledore.

This piece is likely to remain a one-shot for the foreseeable future.


End file.
